Friday, November 14, 2008

Work begins on Queensland clean coal plant

Work is starting in central Queensland on Australia's first pilot plant using clean coal technology.

Federal Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson and his Queensland counterpart Geoff Wilson will visit Biloela, where refurbishment will start on the Callide-A Power station.

Mr Ferguson says the project will help secure the future of the coal industry.

"It is bread and butter for Australia to actually get carbon capture and storage right because we are a nation that is 80 per cent dependent on coal-fired power stations and that represents 32 per cent of Australia's CO2 emissions," he said.

"So when you think about reducing, in one single power station, 90 per cent of the emissions, you apply it across the nation, then you've got a huge reduction in emissions."

Quote from Jim Hansen's newsletter, 15th November 2008

The simple fact of the matter is that the only hope for keeping a planet that resembles the one of the Holocene, the past 10,000 years, is to halt any new CO2 emissions from coal and to phase-out existing coal emissions promptly. I suppose it is possible that some people honestly do not understand that no goal for future CO2 emissions allowing construction of new coal plants will solve the problem and that "capture-ready" is a subterfuge. Fortunately, young people are beginning to catch on to what is happening, and I do not think they will allow the shenanigans to continue much longer. More on that later.